LHC Extends Stay on ICH, Overseas Pakistanis Become Party

The Lahore High Court on Wednesday once again extended stay on International Clearing House and allowed the overseas Pakistanis to become a necessary party in the case.

The court issued the order on a petition moved by Saad Saleem on behalf of Pakistanis expatriates and contended that they were financially overburdened after the levy of additional tax on the international calls made to Pakistan.

He also pleaded that the cancellation of the impugned tax be termed illegal.

The court adjourned the hearing of the case till November 30 and directed counsels of petitioners to come up with more arguments.

Initially, Brain Telecommunication had filed the main petition challenging the levy of the additional tax. The petitioner-company stated that the additional tax on the incoming international calls was a violation of the rules prescribed in section 4 of the Competition Commission Act which prohibited the price fixing and division of market through quotas.

The petitioner said the overseas Pakistanis had been facing immense difficulty and financial loss due to the ‘illegal’ additional tax. After the levy of the said tax since October 1, 2012 Pakistanis living abroad had been paying four times extra charges on a phone call made to the homeland.

The petitioner requested the court to term the impugned tax unlawful and restrain the PTA from collecting the same.

ICH is actually a huge scam to benefit foreign owned LDI companies and
their investors which would result in outflow of billions of dollars from
Pakistan destroy Pakistan’s precious foreign reserves and reducing the amount
of Remittance overseas Pakistani send to Pakistan .
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Long distance international licenses (LDI) were given to companies by PTA in 2004 to bring competition for PTCL, instead they all grouped together bribed out Politicians and Government Officials in PTA, MoIT or perhaps offered them share in their LDI companies and managed to form one single monopoly company called International Clearing House (ICH) and worked out a quota deal with PTCL under guidance from PTA/MoIT . Now just like before 2004, only PTCL handles all international calls , while Rest of the LDIs are doing nothing , they will just collect
cheque as per their quota , amounting to billions each month from MoIT / PTA and send those billions in precious foreign exchange to their parent companies overseas. These extra billions is precious foreign reserve money from overseas Pakistanis which now instead of staying in Pakistan goes to these foreign companies
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If PTA / MoIT wanted to increase government revenue by increasing call rate , they would simply increase Tax (USF) payable by the LDIs . There was no need for grouping of LDIs into single company/consortium . Thefact is forming of ICH will only bring benefits to the LDI operators as most of the money from price increase will go to these foreign own LDI Companies .
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Somebody must investigate how these LDIs managed to form an illegal consortium and why PTA , MoIT are supporting them despite objection from CCP. Why
PTA/MoIT is being so generous by giving billions to these LDI operators? These
LDI licenses were awarded as part of telecom deregulation to have competitive
environment . The licenses have no such provision to group together to form one
monopoly consortium nor fixing rate. Therefore licenses of LDI operators should be canceled for trying to do illegal activities , spreading corruption and damaging Pakistan .
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